Body Swappers 20
Further setbacks cause Maya to feel defeated.
Min came back from speaking with the jail receptionist. “Robert has been booked,” she said, her face fairly neutral in expression.
Maya sat down. She closed her eyes, and they stung.
“This charge won’t stick,” Min said. “The motive is insane. No lawyer would conspire to commit murder in order to get their client off. We get paid either way. And there’s no evidence, either, save the ravings of an ill-informed man.”
Maya opened her eyes. “Don’t discount the weight of that.”
Min flicked her eyebrows in recognition, but went on. “There’s nothing more we can do here. I’ll let you know as soon as the arraignment is scheduled, and I’ll come, in case he doesn’t want to speak for himself.”
“Okay,” Maya said, a weight dropping in her belly. That was it, then. There was nothing to do to protect Robert for the next several hours. Nothing except… “I’m going to try to find the bastard doing this,” she said. Min nodded.
They went out to their respective cars. On her drive back to the Crisis Management Agency, Maya recited in her head what they knew and suspected. Someone was using blood drawn at Deaconess to possess people and commit murder. They were murdering abusers, which suggested they were an abuse survivor. And they were locking their own body in a sensory deprivation tank while they did this. Presumably they chose a third-level transference so they wouldn’t be distracted while they carried out their mission.
That was how they saw it, wasn’t it? From a vigilante mindset, as if they were making the world a better place by their actions. If it were just the abusers dying, Maya didn’t know if she’d disagree. But what about the people whose bodies they were using to do it? Did they not see violating those bodies as an abuse of its own? They were leaving ruined lives in their wake, as those people were arrested, tried, and often found guilty of murder.
And Robert… Maya thought, then flinched away from finishing the sentence.
The use of sensory deprivation tanks was interesting. And not ubiquitous. Gimble had said he’d been restrained to a chair by a combination lock. But then, the murder he’d been accused of had taken place early in the timeline of the serial killer. Their method had adjusted. Perhaps because Gimble got out?
Maya wanted to go back to Airway Heights and wring answers out of Gimble. What did you see out the window? But he’d made it plain he was done talking, and she didn’t want to waste her time. Robert’s time, she thought.
There was a library in between the jail and the Crisis Management Agency, and she’d brought her ballot with her this morning specifically so she could drop it off. She pulled into the parking lot and slid it in the box. There, she thought grumpily in Gimble’s general direction, as if her one Yes vote meant the issue, magic being legally recognized, was already settled. That he shouldn’t have been so paranoid about associating with them.
At the office, Maya found Ruth rubbing her temples where she sat. “Are you okay?” Maya asked, even though she hated being asked this herself.
Ruth looked up. “Robert?”
Maya shook her head. “Min and I are going to the arraignment tomorrow.”
Ruth sighed but nodded. She was worried for Robert, but she didn’t feel this like a gut punch, as Maya had.
“Sensory deprivation tanks?” Maya asked.
“It’s a bust of a lead,” Ruth said, spiky orange and seeping blue leaking out of her in equal measure. “No spa in town would lock the customer in. It’s a liability thing.”
Maya felt spiky orange and seeping blue herself. “Then we’re no closer to figuring out who did this?”
“No.”
Maya sat down. They’d discovered so much, but they were no closer to closing in on their suspect. She felt defeated and tired. She felt like that’s all she’d been feeling lately. It was suffocating.
“I’ll make us some tea,” Ruth said. “We could use it.”